Community Vitality in Action

The Arrowsmith Dialogues

Parksville Qualicum Community Foundation

THE PROJECT-
The Arrowsmith Dialogues is a three-year community dialogue project designed to help the 13 communities and neighbourhoods in the Parksville-Qualicum Beach region, on Vancouver Island's east coast,  better understand themselves and to work better together.  The starting premise is anchored in the belief that how we look at ourselves shapes how we think about ourselves, what we consider important and how we act.

The Dialogues' first year focused on helping the separate and diverse constituencies (political, demographic and interests) shift their perspectives.  By seeing themselves as one, integrated community of approximately 50,000 people nestled between the slopes of Mount Arrowsmith and the shores of Georgia Strait rather than as isolated, independent domains, participants relaxed their parochialism and began to understand the rich array of available assets and resources.

As this shift in perspective solidified, participants recognized that, to work better together, they needed to become more literate and skilled in collaboration theory, techniques and tools.  The Dialogues project, in association with other community allies, expanded to includ the design and delivery of collaboration forums and workshops, allowing participants to discover collaboration's power as an essential civic art for our times.

After only one year, a skilled group of community-minded individuals and organizations who embrace and celebrate the new 'we are one region' perspective and who are disciples of collaboration and its benefits as the preferred way of working together are flooding into the community.  They are helping others discover that dialogue and shared learning are preferred to the now old-school approaches of confrontation and competition.

The Dialogues project was designed to enable organizations and individuals from all sectors (public, private, non-profit and citizen) to participate in conversations and collaborations at their own level of readiness.  Accessibility considerations extended to the day and times of forums and workshops and pricing (Free with pre-registration required).

Being a community catalyst, convenor and champion has enabled the Parksville-Qualicum Foundation (PQF) to showcase its readiness to lead others in creating a future that is robust, resilient and ready for future generations.  This tripartite role allows the PQF to build, animate and support community capacity, deepening the community's ability to create the future it wants.

LESSONS LEARNED

  1. Ensure that all community sectors and stakeholders are represented in collaboration and convening. We used quadrant models to highlight stakeholder diversity.  Among the quadrants used were:
    • Demographics: Our community is fortunate to have active representation and participation from four generations: Traditionals, Baby-boomers, Gen X'ers and Millennials.
    • Sectors: Our community includes four different organizational types: public sector, private sector, non-profit sector and citizen sector.
    • Sustainability: Our community enjoys high levels of sustainability awareness, including the four aspects essential for shared prosperity:  environment, economy, social and cultural.
    • Stakeholders: Our community understands that a range of stakeholder interests and perspectives are necessary, including: Deciders; Informers; Blockers; and those Impacted.
  2. Begin the conversation about the community's future from an appreciative assessment.
    We began the conversations by introducing the community as being at a mid-point with a bright future, rather than as a community needing improvement and a bleak future.  Framing the conversation as hopeful and not despairing enables participants to celebrate what in the community is already working well and what can be built upon.  With this base, they can then turn their positive attention and energy to exploring what needs to be strengthened.
  3. Watch the lights go on in individuals and organizations frustrated in the old ways. We saw energy return to community leaders as they viewed where they live with a fresh perspective and as they realized that collaboration, while not necessarily new, is an available tool that can provide renewed optimism and unforeseen potential.

These re-energized community leaders, as part of a new like-minded network, are now convening conversations in their own circles of influence and are creating momentum for collaboration as a preferred way of seizing the unparalleled opportunities and solving the wicked problems challenging our community.

 NEXT STEPS

The Arrowsmith Dialogues' next phases includes expanding the conversations to neighbouring regions (also home to community foundations).  A one-day Vancouver Island Community Foundation Summit, co-convened in Parksville, with the Community Foundations of Canada's BC Director of Regional Strategies, highlighted the desire and benefits of increased collaboration between community foundations and the broader communities.